A Maiden's Grave (7 page)

Arthur Potter looked out over this cool and windy afternoon, an afternoon with the taste of Halloween in the air despite the midsummer month.

It was about to begin.

He turned away from the window, pushed a rapid-dial button on the phone. Tobe flipped a switch and began the recording. He hit another button and the sound of the ringing crackled through a speaker above their heads.

The phone rang five times, ten, twenty.

Potter felt LeBow's head turn toward him.

Tobe crossed his fingers.

Then:
Click
.

"We've got an uplink," Tobe whispered.

"Yeah?" The voice rang through the speaker.

Potter took a deep breath.

"Lou Handy?"

"Yeah."

"This is Arthur Potter. I'm with the FBI. I'd like to talk to you."

"Lou, that shot, it was a mistake."

"Was it now?"

Potter listened carefully to the voice, laced with a slight accent, mountain, West Virginian. He heard self-confidence, derision, weariness. All three combined to scare him considerably.

"We had a man in a tree. He slipped. His weapon discharged accidentally. He'll be disciplined."

"You gonna shoot him?"

"It was purely an accident."

"Accidents're funny things." Handy chuckled. "I was in Leavenworth a few years back and this asshole worked in the laundry room choked to death on a half-dozen socks. Had to've been a accident. He wouldn't go chewing on socks on purpose. Who'd do that?"

Cool as ice, Potter thought.

"Maybe this was that kinda accident."

"This was a run-of-the-mill, U.S.-certified accident, Lou."

"Don't much care what it was. I'm shooting one of 'em. Eenie meenie miney…"

"Listen to me, Lou…"

No answer.

"Can I call you Lou?"

"You got us surrounded, don'tcha? You got assholes in the trees with guns even if they can't sit on branches without falling. Guess you can call me what you fucking well like."

"Listen to me, Lou. This's a real tense situation here."

"Not for me it ain't. I ain't tense at all. Here's a pretty little blond one. No tits to speak of. Think I'll pick her."

He's playing with us. Eighty percent he's bluffing.

"Lou, Wilcox was in clear view. Our man was only eighty yards away, M-16 with a scope. Those troopers can drop a man at a thousand yards if they have to."

"But it's awful windy out there. Maybe your boy didn't compensate."

"If we'd've wanted your man dead he'd be dead."

"That don't matter. I keep telling you. Accident or not," he snarled, "gotta teach you people some manners." The bluff factor dropped to sixty percent.

Stay calm, Potter warned himself. Out of the corner of his eye he watched young Derek Elb wipe his palms on his pants and stuff a piece of gum into his mouth. Budd paced irritatingly, looking out the window.

"Let's just put it down to a mishap, Lou, and get on with what we have to talk about."

"Talk about?" He sounded surprised. "Whatta we gotta talk about?"

"Oh, lots," Potter said cheerfully. "First of all, is everybody doing okay in there? You have any injuries? Anybody hurt?"

His instinct was to ask specifically about the girls but negotiators try never to talk about the hostages if possible. You have to make the HT think that the captives have no bargaining value.

"Shep's a little bent outta shape, as you'd imagine, but otherwise everybody's right as rain. Course, ask again in five minutes. One of 'em ain't gonna be feeling so good."

Potter wondered: What did she say to me? He pictured Melanie's face again. Lips, teeth, lips…

"You need any first-aid supplies?"

"Yeah."

"What?"

"A medevac chopper."

"That's kind of a tall order, Lou. I was thinking more bandages or morphine, something like that. Antiseptic."

"Morphine? That wouldn't be to make us all dopey, would it? You'd like that, bet."

"Oh, we wouldn't give you enough to dope you up, Lou. You need anything at all?"

"Yeah, I need to shoot somebody's what I need. Little blondie here. Put a bullet 'tween the tits she don't have."

"That wouldn't do anybody any good now, would it?"

Potter was thinking: He likes to talk. He's unstable but he likes to talk. That's always the first hurdle, sometimes insurmountable. The quiet ones are the most dangerous. The agent cocked his head and prepared to listen carefully. He had to get into Handy's mind. Fall into his speech patterns, guess what the man is going to say, how he's going to say it. Potter would play this game all night until, by the time things were resolved one way or another, part of him would
be
Louis Jeremiah Handy.

"What's your name again?" Handy asked.

"Arthur Potter."

"You go by Art?"

"Arthur, actually."

"Ain't you got the info on me?"

"Some. Not much."

Potter thought spontaneously:
I killed a guard escaping
.

"I killed me a guard when we were escaping. Didn't you know that?"

"Yes, I did."

Potter thought:
So the girl without any tits don't mean shit to me
.

"So killing this girl, little blondie here, it don't mean nothing to me."

Potter pushed a mute button – a special device on the phone, which cut off his voice without a click on the other end. "Who's he talking about?" he asked LeBow. "Which hostage? Blond, twelve or under?"

"I don't know yet," the intelligence officer responded. "We can't get a clear look inside and don't have enough information."

Into the phone he said, "Why d'you want to hurt anybody, Lou?"

He'll change the subject, Potter guessed.

But Handy said, "Why not?"

Theoretically Potter knew he should be talking about frivolous things, stretching out the conversation, winning the man over, making him laugh. Food, sports, the weather, conditions inside the slaughterhouse, soft drinks. You never talked to the HTs about the incident itself at first. But he was assessing the risk that Handy was about to kill the girl and the bluff ratio was down to thirty percent; he couldn't afford to chat about hamburgers and the White Sox.

"Lou, I don't think you want to kill anybody."

"How d'you figure?"

Potter managed a chuckle. "Well, if you start killing hostages I'll have to conclude that you're planning to kill them all anyway. That's when I send in our hostage rescue team to take you all out."

Handy was laughing softly, "If them boys was there."

Potter and LeBow frowned at each other. "Oh, they're here," Potter said. He nodded at the "Deceptions" side of the bulletin board and LeBow jotted,
Handy told that HRT is in place
.

"You're asking me to hold off killing her?"

"I'm asking you not to kill anyone."

"I don't know. Should I, shouldn't I? You know how that happens sometimes, you just don't know what you want? Pizza or a Big Mac? Just can't fucking decide."

Potter's heart stuttered for a moment, for it seemed to him that Handy was being honest: that he really couldn't decide what to do, and that if he spared the girl it wouldn't be Potter's reasoned talk that saved her but whim, pure and simple, on Handy's part.

"I'll tell you what, Lou. I'm apologizing to you for the gunshot. I'll give you my word it won't happen again. In exchange for that, will you agree not to shoot that girl?"

He's smart, calculating, always thinking, the agent concluded. There wasn't a thing psychotic about Handy that Potter could identify. He wrote on a sheet of paper
IQ
? and pushed it toward LeBow.

Don't have it.

Handy's humming came through the phone. It was a song that Potter had heard a long time ago. He couldn't place it. Then through the speaker the man's amplified voice said, "Maybe I'll wait."

Potter sighed. LeBow gave him a thumbs-up and Budd smiled.

"I appreciate that, Lou. I really do. How's your food situation?"

Are you for real
? Potter speculated.

"What're you, first you play cop, then you play nurse, now you're a fucking caterer?"

"I just want to keep everybody real calm and comfortable. Get you some sandwiches and sodas if you want. What do you say?"

"We're not hungry."

"Could be a long night."

Either: silence or
Won't be that long at all
.

"Don't think it's gonna be that long. Listen here, Art, you can chat me up 'bout food and medicine and any other crap you can think of. But the fact is we've got some things we're gonna want and we better have 'em without no hassles or I start killing. One by one."

"Okay, Lou. Tell me what they are."

"We'll do some talking here between us. And get back to you."

"Who's 'us,' Lou?"

"Aw, shit, you know, Art. There's me and Shep and my two brothers."

LeBow tapped Potter's arm. He was pointing to the screen. It read:

Handy is one of three brothers. Bench warrant out on Robert, 27. LKA, Seattle; failed to appear for grand larceny trial, fled jurisdiction. Eldest brother, Rudy, 40, was killed five years ago. Shot six times in the back of head by unknown assailant. Handy was suspected; never charged.

Potter thought of the delicate lines on his genealogy charts. What would Handy's look like; from whom did his blood descend? "Your brothers, Lou?" he said. "Is that right? They're inside with you?"

A pause.

"And Shep's four cousins."

"That's a lot of folk you got there. Anybody else?"

"Doc Holliday and Bonnie 'n' Clyde and Ted Bundy and a shitload of the gang from Mortal Kombat, and Luke Skywalker. And Jeffrey Dahmer's hungry ghost."

"Maybe we better surrender to
you
, Lou."

Handy laughed again. Potter was pleased at the sliver of rapport. Pleased too that he managed to say the magic word "surrender," plant it in Handy's thoughts.

"My nephew collects superhero comics," the agent said. "He'd love an autograph. Spider-Man wouldn't be in there too, would he?"

"Might just be."

The fax machine whirred and a number of sheets scrolled out. LeBow snatched them up and flipped through them rapidly, paused at one and then scribbled on the top,
HOSTAGES
. He pointed to a girl's name, followed by a block of handwritten text. It was preliminary data from Angie Scapello.

Hostage negotiation is the process of testing limits. Potter read the fax and noticed something. He said casually, "Say, Lou, like to ask you a question. One of those girls in there's got some serious health problems. Would you let her go?"

It was surprising how often direct requests of this sort worked. Ask a question and go silent.

"Really?" Handy sounded concerned. "Sick, huh? What's the trouble?"

"Asthma." Maybe the joking and the cartoon-character chat was having an effect on Handy.

"Which one is she?"

"Fourteen, short blond hair."

Potter listened to the background noise – just hollowness – as Handy, he assumed, looked over the hostages.

"If she doesn't get her medicine she could die," Potter said. "You release her, you do that for me, and when we get down to the serious negotiating I'll remember it. Tell you what, release her and we'll get you some electricity in there. Some lights."

"You'll turn the power on?" Handy asked so suddenly it startled Potter.

"We checked into that. The place is too old. It's not wired for modern current." Potter pointed to the "Deceptions" board and LeBow wrote. "But we'll run a line in and get you some lights."

"Do that and then we'll talk."

The balance of power was shifting subtly to Handy. Time to be tough. "All right. Fair enough. Now listen, Lou, I have to warn you. Don't try to get out of the building. There'll be snipers sighting on you. You're perfectly safe inside."

He'll be angry, Potter anticipated. A mini tantrum. Obscenities and expletives.

"Oh, I'm perfectly safe anywhere," Handy whispered into the phone. "Bullets pass right through me. I have strong medicine. When do I get some lights?"

"Ten minutes, fifteen. Give us Beverly, Lou. If you do -"

Click.

"Damn," Potter muttered.

"Little eager there, Arthur," LeBow said. Potter nodded. He'd made the classic mistake of negotiating against himself. Always wait for the other side to ask you for something. Understandably he'd pushed when he heard Handy's hesitation and upped the stakes himself. But he'd scared off the seller. Still, at some point he'd have to go through this exercise. Hostage takers can be pushed a certain distance, and bribed a certain amount further. Half the battle was finding out how far and when to do which.

Potter called Stillwell and told him he'd warned the takers about leaving the slaughterhouse. "You're green-lighted to contain them, as discussed."

"Yessir," Stillwell said.

Potter asked Budd, "What's the ETA on that power truck?"

"Should be just ten minutes." He was looking out the window morosely.

"What's the matter, Charlie?"

"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking that was good what you did there. Talking him out of shooting her."

Potter sensed there was something else on Budd's mind. But he said only, "Oh, Handy was the one who decided not to shoot. I had nothing to do with it. The problem is, I don't know why yet."

Potter waited five minutes, then pushed speed dial.

The phone rang a million times. "Could you please turn that down a little, Tobe?" Potter nodded at the speaker above his head.

"Sure… Okay, uplink."

"Yeah?" Handy barked.

"Lou, you'll have a power line in about ten minutes."

Silence.

"What about the girl, Beverly?"

"Can't have her," he said abruptly, as if surprised that Potter hadn't figured this out yet.

Silence for a moment.

"Thought you said if you got power -"

"I'd think about it. I did, and you can't have her."

Never get drawn into petty bickering. "Well, have you done any thinking about what you fellows want?"

"I'll get back to you on that, Art."

"I was hoping -"